The enterprising Googlers who created an immersive setup that uses eight 55-inch HD displays to surround you with a near-360° Google Earth fly-through have open sourced the code and mechanical plans for what they call their "Liquid Galaxy".
"With the Liquid Galaxy, we ... fly through the Grand Canyon, leap into low-Earth orbit …

COMMENTS

Nice

When I was at Google last year they only had the setup with three panels, and it was already impressive. It did work more fluidly than what the youtube clip shows... The 3D controller needs a fair bit of getting used to, but after that it's addictive :)

hmm...

Couldn't they have done this a lot cheaper with say.... ooh, I dunno some massive multiple supporting system that couldn't possibly exist. Say, ooooh, Eyefinity?

I don't think it can do 8 monitors in that particular set up, but it could do 6 probably with some driver hackery? Since the best it can do portrait is 3, it can do 6 just not in that orientation apparently...

SpaceNavigator

"Joystick" appears to be a SpaceNavigator 6dof (x, y, z, roll, pitch, yaw movement). I have a SpaceExplorer version (same controller, more buttons) for VR work and they are pretty great for this sort of environment once you get used to them.

Too much information for the human brain?

You do realise Google Earth is actually modelled on a real place called Earth? No? Well, perhaps you'd like to visit us sometime? There's all sorts of things to do. You can see things, touch things, taste things, hear things and smell... Well really, the least you can do is not let your head explode while I'm talking to you!

shop early for . . .

Why so much latency...

Interesting project, but the lag is very noticeable between monitors. (I assume its one PC per monitor with a different view into the same 3d world). If they have one central computer which sends user movement updates to all other computers/monitors that would remove all noticeable lag between monitors. (It wouldn't remove lag between user control movements and final monitor updating computers, but it would at least remove the bad lag they currently have between different monitors).

Meditation Chamber

Been there done that.

++: If you have a network, try setting up a network game with three players. The three terminals should have the parameters:

"doom -devparm -net 3 -left"

"doom -devparm -net 3"

"doom -devparm -net 3 -right"

Then, set up the left and right terminal monitors next to the middle monitor, in a virtual-reality type configuration. When you turn your head, you see the screen turned 90 degrees! This ONLY works with versions 1.0 or 1.1 of DOOM.

Grenade because that would have made doom (and google earth) much better.

@ Jake - "Ubuntu sysadmin scripts"

"We use Ubuntu Linux for its stability and ease of administration" - page one of the HOWTO.

Maybe the technically incompetent marketing types wrote the manual as well as the quote from the article?

My distro's better than your distro! Erm, no. Yours has users that have a superiority complex. Surely that's a bug, not a feature? Can we not just say that some distros are better at certain things than others, and leave it at that?